The Fosters Episode Review: “Father’s Day”

It was father’s day this week on The Fosters and that made for some interesting family times. Callie was spending the day with Robert and his family, including Sophia who is back home while Mariana was to be attending a large family gathering with Ana, her grandparents, and a bunch of extended family. Meanwhile, back at the house, Stef and Lena were hosting a father’s day dinner for Mike like they do every year, but this year Jude also invited Donald, and Connor and his dad joined them as well. Yup, definitely interesting.

This episode actually didn’t have a whole lot of drama and focused more on the family side of it. I think the most dramatic thing to happen was Brandon getting drunk. Other than that there was a lot of really nice bonding moments between the various members of the Adams-Foster family.

Marianna confessed to Ana that she slept with Wyatt. It is revealed that they were safe so I’m happy about that because that means that we’ll probably be avoiding a pregnancy storyline. Ana was significantly different this week than she was in the season premier and actually comforted Mariana and told her she should tell Stef and Lena.

Callie and Sophia learned that Robert and his wife are splitting up. This situation is definitely stressful and probably isn’t going to help Sophia’s recovery. They didn’t directly state why they were splitting up, Robert said it was because he had always kind of treated her as second fiddle, but I have a funny feeling it also has something to do with Callie suddenly being in the picture.

There was also an issue with Callie and Jude this episode because Callie is angry at Donald for the fact that he caused the accident that killed their mother. However, by the end of the episode she calls him dad and wishes him a Happy Father’s Day. Not going to lie, I got a little misty eyed. It was an incredibly sweet scene.

During dinner at the house, Jude is keeping two secrets. The first secret is that his dad was in jail. Connor knows, but Connor’s dad, Adam, doesn’t. The other secret is one he’s hiding from his dad and that is that he and Connor are together. While they manage to keep the first secret all the way through the evening, the second one does come out.

Connor’s dad finds out that Connor and Jude are out at school and tells him he didn’t want people to know because he cares about what people think. I was already raging at Adam by this point so after this it was like a volcano of anger with the way he reacted. However, Donald comes back in the best possible way when he asks if Adam cares what people think of Connor or of himself. He also says that any bullying Connor receives at home because of being gay is going to be worse than anything that happens at school. This was a huge realization for Connor’s dad and for Jude as well.

Side note for a second here. When they toasted all the ‘special men in their lives’ Connor and Jude looked at each other and it was the cutest thing ever.

While I’m not really a fan of Connor’s dad, I am really liking how they’re handling this storyline. They’re showing that the coming out process isn’t just hard on the kid, but on the parent as well. It also shows how the parents need to learn the right ways to act and behave because even though this huge secret of their kid’s is out there, the child still needs all the support he or she can get. So I’m really happy with how they’re dealing with it because it definitely feels real.

Jude’s dad told him that he just wants Jude to be himself and I think this was exactly what Jude wanted and needed to hear. With everything that’s been going on, I think knowing now that even though he has Stef and Lena as his parents, having Donald in his life and supporting him will really help Jude.

The final storyline in Monday’s episode was, of course, AJ. After stealing the spray paint last week, we learned he had been arrested for tagging. Callie, who has still not told her parents that she was fired from her placement, asks Stef to help him. She does so and the decision is made that Mike is going to foster AJ. However, as it will take some time for him to get his license, AJ will be staying at the house.

This is obviously not good. We know from the previews that AJ will be taking advantage of the Fosters in some way and we’ve already seen that he causes trouble a lot and has no issue lying. Needless to say, this isn’t going to end well.